McBryan Historical documents-Wilson Line

The Old Country

2007-11-18T06:31:00.001-08:00

Pretty much all the original members of both paternal and maternal households came out of Ulster. For anyone who wants to visit, here's a site that shows the approximate area to aim for.

Fermanagh Today

District (pop., 2001: 57,527),

Extreme southwestern Northern Ireland. Located chiefly in the River Erne basin, it was established as a district within the boundaries of the traditional county in 1973; the district seat is Enniskillen. Settled from prehistory, Fermanagh has a scattering of megaliths, cairns, and early Celtic Christian antiquities. Devenish Island, in Lower Lough Erne, is the site of an ancient monastery. During the reign of James I (1603 – 25), many English Anglicans were settled there. It is one of the most important tourist areas in Northern Ireland.

Agriculture and tourism are two of the most important industries in Fermanagh. The main types of farming in the area are beef, dairy, sheep, pigs and some poultry. Most of the agricultural land is used as grassland for grazing and silage or hay rather than for other crops.The waterways are extensively used by cabin cruisers, other small pleasure craft and anglers. The main town of Fermanagh is Enniskillen (Inis Ceithleann, Ceithleann's island). The island town hosts a range of attractions including the Castle Coole Estate and Enniskillen Castle, which is home to the museum of The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards.

Attractions outside of Enniskillen include:
Belleek Pottery
Crom Estate
Devenish Island
Florence Court
Loughnavar Forest Park
Marble Arch Caves

Famous people born, raised in or living in Fermanagh.
Gordon Wilson,(1927-1995) Peace campaigner and Irish senator
Oscar Wilde, (1854-1900) author and playwright
http://www.answers.com/topic/fermanagh

What is in a Name?

2007-11-16T05:31:00.000-08:00

What would be the fun of tracing family trees if you could not find a famous ancestor or two? Of course if you go back far enough, everybody is related to everybody. I found a surprising demonstration of that in inspecting records telling about the derivation of our own family names.

Not much potential for that with with McBryan.

Rural Irish did not start using permanent surnames for a long time. Brian (Of the Tributes) Boru, the progenitor of the O'Brien Sept in Munster started asking for this around 1000 AD for taxation purposes. Before that surnames were descriptive of one person. Brian son (Mc or Mac) of Shamus would be be a father to Patrick McBryan. Eventually government started insisting on permanent last names. At which point Patrick's daughter would be Bridget McBryan, not Bridget McPatrick.Peadar Livingstone describes this happening rather late in the day for an isolated rural community up in the hills overlooking the River Shannon and some long lakes stretched along the valley floor.
In Ross Beattie's website:

Peadar Livingstone (The Fermanagh Story, 1969) wrote :
"[Page 421] — "BREEN (Mac Briain) : also McBryan, McBrien, McBreen. This family descends from Brian, grandson of Manus from whom the MacManuses descend. They are thus related to the MacManus family and the Maguires. Their original center was at Baile Mhic Sherraigh or Mullamackervey townland in Aghalurcher. The first McBryan chieftain seems to have been An Giolla Dubh (the Black Servant), who, having led his tribe for eight and a half years, was proclaimed the "Mac Briain" in 1488. He ruled till 1506."

The family of the Brian we were named for:
“a branch of the Maguires, descend from Magnus, son of Donn Maguire, Chief of Fermanagh, who died in 1302. This family lived on the shores of Lough Erne, COunty Fermanagh, and Belle Isle in that lake was formerly called Ballymacmanus in their honour. In Fermanagh they were second in power only to the Maguires themselves, and from their base on the island ....controlled the shipping and fishing of the lake."

Therefore McBryan's in the area our family came from were a junior tribe where older and more established groups controlled the flat arable land along the lakes and rivers and another controlled water commerce. I haven't been able to find Mullamackervey townland in Aghalurcher, but anyways McBryan's soon migrated down toward Inismacsaint and the control of territory by native Irish became moot after the Plantations.

The Plantation of Ulster was a planned process of colonisation which took place in the northern Irish province of Ulster during the early 17th century in the reign of James I of England. English and Scottish Protestants were settled on land that had been confiscated from Catholic Irish landowners in the counties of Donegal, Coleraine1, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Armagh and Cavan, following the Flight of the Earls in 1607. The Plantation of Ulster was the biggest and most successful of the Plantations of Ireland. Ulster was planted in this way to prevent further rebellion, having proved itself over the preceding century to be the most resistant of Ireland's provinces to English invasion.

Always a contentious bunch, the fiercely independent Northern Irish Chieftains had resisted for hundreds of years every attempt at English domination of the area through the reigns of many English Monarchs until the English crown decided upon it's own “Final Solution”.

The Plantations had a profound impact on Ireland in several ways. The first was the destruction of the native ruling classes and their replacement with the so-called Protestant Ascendancy, of British (mostly English) Protestant landowners. Their position was buttressed by the Penal Laws, which denied political and land-owning rights to Catholics and to some extent to Presbyterians. The dominance of this class in Irish life persisted until the late 19th century and cemented the British control over the country.

The Plantations also had a major cultural impact. Gaelic Irish culture was sidelined and English replaced Irish as the language of power and business. Although, by 1700, Irish remained the majority language in Ireland, for the Parliament, the courts and trade, English was completely dominant. In the next two centuries it was to advance westwards across the country until Irish suddenly collapsed after the Great Famine of the 1840s.

Finally, the plantations also radically altered Ireland’s ecology and physical appearance. In 1600, most of Ireland was heavily wooded and covered with bogs. Most of the population lived in small townlands, many migrating seasonally to fresh pastures for their cattle. By 1700, Ireland’s native woodland had been decimated, having been intensively exploited by the new settlers for commercial ventures such as shipbuilding. Several native species such as the wolf had been hunted to extinction and much of the bog land was drained for agriculture. Most of the population now lived in permanent towns or villages, although the Irish peasantry continued their traditional practises in isolated areas. Moreover, almost all of Ireland was now integrated into a market economy — although many of the poorer classes would not have had access to money, still paying their rents in kind or in service.

Plantations of Ireland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

McBryan's continued to increase.
“After the Plantation the family seems to have multiplied greatly. Some of them became Protestants. ...... In 1788 - five years before Catholics got the vote -we find many McBryans on the Fermanagh register, ....... In 1796, when Catholics were included, we find 30 on the register - many of them at Ardees in Inishmacsaint Parish, which by then was the new centre of the family. Today there are 212 Breen-McBryan voters in Fermanagh and it is the county's seventeenth family."
From Ross Beatties website

Northern Ireland was the first overseas invaded nation state in what later became the British Empire. By 1834, English absentee landlords had amassed so much territory that there were only three landowners left in the Parish of Innesmacsaint, all the original inhabitants having been reduced to being tenant farmers at cripplingly high rents on their own ancestral lands.

In 1834 Lieutenant P. Taylor wrote regarding the Parish in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs,
"The central division is composed of a wild, romantic, mountainous, heathy district composing the townlands of Lenaghan, Blackslee, Shean, Bolusky [?Bolusty Beg], Tiernagher and Drumbag [?Drumbad], forming an irregularly connected range with the Boho mountains."
Nearby Derrygonnelly in 1834 boasted, according to Taylor’s report, "about 20 families, 6 of whom are shopkeepers and 12 spirit dealers". Church Hill, ( Inishmacsaint ) another village mentioned in the report, was smaller.
In the report attention is drawn to the fact that the Parish was basically owned by three people, the Marquis of Ely, and two other absentee owners, General Archdale (per Charles I) and Colonel Montgomery (per James I). Another landowner just east of Inishmacsaint (in the parish of Devinish, now called the Parish of Devinish and Boho) was John Dawson Brien, the sheriff of Fermanagh.“

From Ross Beatties website

Inhabitants of the area were noted for being exceptionally long lived and healthy but not much else of a positive nature. The surveyors report in that website describes in rather graphic detail the prevailing atmosphere of depression that people lived in.

Statistical Report by Lieutenant P. Taylor. November 1834

General Appearance and Scenery.
Nothing can surpass in grandeur, sublimity and beauty the richly diversified scenery of this extensive parish, either in contemplating the majestic range of mountains elevating their lofty, sombre summits to the sky, the mural escarpments and castellated forms of the more humble but equally interesting chain of limestone heights in everlasting verdure, the awfully impending, perpendicular precipices and cliffs, exhibiting in their form and structure the organisation of the universe, the enchanting form and variety of the alpine lakes upon the summit of the mountains, the beautiful tranquillity of the undulating vale, the silvery, oceanic expanse of Lough Erne and Melvin, their islands, peninsulas and promontories, altogether combine in imparting vitality and animation to scenery of the very highest range and order.”

Habits of the People
Would that it were possible, in sincerity and truth, to characterise the community as a people of sober, cleanly, frugal and industrious habits. An apathy and indifference to the accumulation of wealth seem to pervade almost the whole population, apparently happy and contented in their condition and nearly upon equality with each other. They evince no ambition or desire of independence. A distant view of the farmhouses, gardens, orchards and planted hedgerows, which so much adorn and beautify the country, present great improvement and superiority to many other parishes, and induce a supposition of much neatness and care; but on a close examination of the premises the same indifference to cleanliness and comfort alike, without and within the dwellings, universally prevails, from the humble cottier in his cabin to the yeoman farmer of 100 acres with valuable flocks upon his glens. .......Potatoes and milk constitute the diet of the peasantry. Several years ago oatmeal and animal food formed no small portion of their daily meals, but both have long since, and still continue, luxuries very far beyond their present humble resources.

Emigration
Nothing but the means of transport prevents a simultaneous emigration of the labouring class to Australia or the Canadas. Let the emigration advocates come forward, and the superabundant population, if an evil, will soon disappear.

General Remarks
There is not a parish in the kingdom more capable of improvement than Inishmacsaint. Its valuable carboniferous quarries of limestone, abounding in every direction, afford the immediate means of enriching and fructifying the soil. Its undulating surface presents the utmost facility for drainage. The graduated ascent from the summit of the mountain render the reclaiming of bog and waste land a simple operation. Lough Erne washing its northern and Lough Melvin its south western boundaries furnish a cheap and ready transport for its produce. In short, the only desideratum wanting to render it a prosperous and wealthy parish is a persevering spirit of industry and steady habits of accumulation on the part of its
intelligent and hardy tenantry.

[Signed] P. Taylor. Lieutenant Royal Engineers, 13th November 1834.”

Hmmmm.... And the incentive would be............?

As far as famous relatives go, I guess the McBryan's will just have to make do with this "Black Servant". My first thought when I heard the title was that he must be either a hit man or a magus. A knight's leap to the side and a couple of steps forward however does bring us to Hugh Maguire, cousin and Lord of Fermanagh, 1589 who fought the British encroachment on Ireland to the bitter end near Cork during the Nine Years War. Check out:

Needless to say, McBryan's among others wanted out long before the potato famine forced thousands of starving Irish peasantry unto barely floating "coffin ships" to escape to the new world.The ancestors of our line, Henry and Mary (Allingham) McBryan were lucky they had enough resources to get out before the rush started, even though it meant taking four children, the oldest barely teenagers and Mary probably in an advanced state of pregnancy or with an infant at the breast on the ordeal of a long transatlantic crossing.

Just for fun more origins of names

2007-11-13T18:37:00.000-08:00

Lots of potential on the Casey (Maternal) side for famous ancestors. Curiously enough, Casey's are related to the O'Brien's while our branch of the McBryan's are not. Granny Case, (Grace Casey) always told us that "Casey's are decended from the Kings of Ireland." She was quite proud of that. Found out she was right. Casey's are decendants of the Tribe of Cas (DalgCais) more commonly refered to as the Dalcassians of Thomond who are descended from a progenitor, Cormac Cas who died in 254 A.D. The most famous of the Delcassians was Brian Boru, Last High King of Ireland, who like that much better known but much less documented Welshman, King Arthur, waged a lifelong battle to keep Northern Europeans, Danes in this case from swallowing the whole country.
Check out, and, and.

O'Brien's trace their decent directly from Brian Boru.
Casey's trace their decent from his second son.

Those O'Brien's are really up on this genealogical stuff, they have a lovely slick website. For those hankering for family shield and heraldry, the've got the stuff.

See here:
They have a castle, Dromoland Castle and a Dromoland Estate in Thomond House where the current O'Brien,

"The O’Brien, Prince of Thomond, Chief of the Name, The 18th Baron Inchiquin, 10th Baronet of Leamaneh -aka "The Great Condor" for flying, rather than driving, his Aston Martin. Conor Myles John O’Brien, born in Surrey, England on 17th July 1943, the son of the youngest son of 15th Baron Inchiquin”lives and "run(s) an exclusive guest house in their home Thomond House at Dromoland, as well as having turned Dromoland Estate into a major sporting and leisure centre. Activities include, driven pheasant shooting, stalking, fishing, horse riding, eventing, hunter trials, clay pigeon shooting, archery and other activities".More:

Bet there are more O'Briens and McBryans prowling around Ireland with visitors visa in the summer than there are actually living there anymore.

This Casey line has reached a terminus, Alan and Olive's children, Christopher, Martin and Leanora have not had children of their own.

I thought for a while that Margaret Kenny's (Dad's mother) people might be also Dalcassian, but a search on her name led me to:

Kenny: (Paternal Maiden name)The name Kenny in Ireland is derived from a number of sources including the native Gaelic O'Cionnaoith (without servile work)Sept, who were principally based in Counties Galway and Tyrone. From there the Galway Kenny's probably entered Tipperary crossing the river Shannon at Portumna to settle primarily in the northern part of Tipperary. Other descendants may derive from English or French (Normand) settlers who arrived into County Wexford. John O'Hart in his book Irish Pedigrees records that the name Kenny and Kenney is of Huguenot origin. The Huguenots were protestant refugees from France, Belgium and the Holland who fled from religious persecution under King Louis the XIV in the 1600's. The Duke of Ormond (Barony of Ormond is now Tipperary) and the Earl of Stafford under the rule of King Charles then set out to encourage the Huguenots to emigrate to Ireland during the mid 1600's. (Ulster Plantations).The Kenny name is among the eighty most frequently found in the country."

Makes one wonder about Granny Mac's rabid Catholicism. I do remember her however, telling me that her family came from near the River Shannon in Ireland. We are not sure where Granny's family lived in Eastern Canada or when they came. I did get a sugestion that she was from Napanee Ontario and a quick google confirms that Kenny is still a pretty common name in Napanee. On my father's (Kenneth McBryan's) birth certificate she uses Toronto.

Additional info from the dusty crawl space of my brother's house. A copy of Margaret Kenny's baptismal certificate. Apparently her father's name was Michael Kenny and her mothers name Jane Clair. The location of the baptism is St. Antony of Padua in Newburg Ontario. These photo's have a Mrs J McBryan written on them in my father's handwriting, but I bet these are of Margaret Kenny's mother, they are too old a costume to be her.

Woolsey, (Maternal Maiden name) Granny Case's father, (Casey was her husband's name). All I know about him was that he was English, living in Ireland where Granny Case (Grace Lillian) was born, somewhere in Ulster. Woolsy is a very common name in Norfolk and Suffolk in England, pure Saxon, from before William the Conqueror.
I know my great grandfather served in India, (my grandmother had one of his tunic buttons on a hatpin and some coiled Indian brass snake bracelets with emerald and ruby eyes. My sister still has one). He later moved the whole family to Swansea in England where Granny trained as a teacher. He might have been a British soldier stationed in Northern Ireland around 1880 to keep an eye on "The Troubles" who married an Irish woman while he was there.Grace Lillian later emigrated to Canada where she married Martin Casey son of a Newfoundland dory fishing family.

Four Western Families

2007-10-24T17:48:00.001-07:00

Wilson McBryan and Margaret Kenny-Married 1913

Wilson and Margaret came to an Edmonton that was undergoing a rapid and radical transition from a frontier trading post to a busy mercantile hub. Jasper Avenue had been paved.

Fine brick building were replacing wooden store fronts. Everywhere was growth and activity.

In the year they were married the Provincial Legislature was built. They tore down the old Fort Edmonton.

The logs were stored for decades before the old fort was reconstructed as a historical park in it's present position.

Quite often in the spring the McBryan home became a lakeshore cottage as the river flooded all the land to the south and east of them.

My Dad used to tell us how they would park locomotives on the low level bridge to weigh it down so it would not be swept away.

The flood of 1916 was particularly bad, but every year there was danger until the Brazeau Dam was completed.

You could take a scary ride on the streetcar above the newly opened High Level Bridge.

The CP Rail had built it's castle on the hill the MacDonald Hotel.

Wilson had first come west to participate in a fall harvest excursion, farmers always needed huge numbers of extra hands for threshing, with his brother Frederick who was a teacher in Edmonton in 1905. He liked it so much he came back to Edmonton. There he met Margaret Kenny who was a seamstress. They got married in 1913. Frederick had wanted to branch out from teaching and was doing survey work up by West Prarie River in 1916 when he died in a swimming accident. Wilson named his first son Kenneth Frederick in his memory. Ken was born two months after the accident.

The War in Europe with it's rationing and civilian shortages eventually slogged it's way to a weary finish in 1918 and Edmonton began to recoup and enjoy it's own modest version of the Roaring Twenties.The Wilson McBryan family was prosperous and well situated for the time. Wilson had found a patron in J. R. Boyle another Lambton good o'l boy from back East, a lawyer, who became a city Alderman (1904) and later sat in the Alberta Legislative assembly (1905) as Minister of Education. J. R. Boyle had studied law at Osgood Hall with Wilson’s eldest brother William McBryan.

The Albert town of Boyle is named after him as is Boyle Street in downtown Edmonton. He built one of Edmonton's Heritage buildings, the Lambton Block.

Wilson became J.R.’s assistant and was responsible tor setting up school districts all over northern Alberta. He was known as “Mickey”. When prohibition was repealed he was also head of the Alberta Liquor Control Board. Wilson was J.R’s campaign manager for his last election campaign. Wilson was a very good looking man, who from the photos I have seen definitely knew how to play to the camera. Apparently he also knew how to play to the ladies too, John Mcbryan tells me. He was in the center of the high life in Alberta.

Wilson and his niece Gertrude Stein.

Wilson and Margaret purchased four lots at the bottom of the 104th street hill on the Rossdale flats. They had a big garden, four cows, a bunch of chickens and a smart buggy with a fast little black horse to pull it. They were their generation's version of the young fast track professionals. They had six children in the first nine years of their marriage, Helen Margaurite in 1914, Kenneth Frederick in 1915, Alberta in 1918, Roderick Wilson in 1919, Jetta Christine in 1920 and John Henry in 1922.

Wilson, Margaret and Helen in Bonnie Doon

In the late twenties everything began to unravel.

"The Great Depression
A worldwide reversal of economic fortune occurred when the stock market fell in October 1929 and ushered in the Great Depression, words that still conjure up dark memories for many people.

Life in Alberta during the Depression—also known as the dirty thirties—was characterized by social upheaval and the worst economic conditions the province had ever faced. Prices for agricultural products plunged, severe and prolonged drought struck the prairies,

and young men rode the rails across the country in search of work." Also.

Ken selling Liberty Magazine about 1929

Photos from Edmonton City Archives ,Edmonton Library, andGlenbow Archives
Just as a note of interest, both the Glenbow Archives and the Edmonton City Archives appear to have locked up most Depression Era images of personal poverty and civil unrest. Key words such as "depression", "dirty thirties" etc all come up with a no items that fit that description field. I found these with just a general search Edmonton 1930. Mostly just photos of buildings and military photos. Wonder how these two sneaked by. Maybe both collections are just down for reorganization.

Wilson lost his patron when J. R. Boyle left his seat as leader of the fading Alberta Liberal Party, to became a Judge on the Alberta Supreme Court. Wilson was forty four years old in 1930, the glory days were over, he had hitched his wagon to a falling star. The years of drought and the rebellion of the rural community and labour were just the beginning of economic hard times. The business sector collapsed soon after in 1929 and all the relationships carefully nurtured over JR's almost two decades in public life came to naught. Wilson worked as a manager for Safeway for a while and for the railway, but things just kept getting worse. Wilson's mother Christine (Smith) McBryan died in 1935. J. R. Boyle died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1936. Some of Wilson's relatives had not approved of a good Orange boy marrying a Catholic in the first place. The Peace River/Grand Prairie relatives had their own hardships to deal with.

Times had became very tough for the McBryan household by 1933. They always had enough to eat my father told us. There was the cow for milk and a calf every year, chickens in the coop and big potato and vegetable plots. My grandmother told us that the kids picked gallon after gallon of saskatoon berries from the thick stands of bushes along the river bank. These were dried and stored in pillow cases for the winter. They picked rosehips for vitamin C rich rosehip jam and high bush cranberries and chokecherries for tart jellies. It was my uncle John's job to run up town to pick up day old loaves of bread that Granny kept in a big copper boiler in the uninsulated back porch. Fuel to heat the house was a problem. Uncle John told us that he would put on his brother Ken's good warm fleece coat and go down to the railroad tracks that passed near the house to scour the track side for lumps of coal that might have fallen off passing coal cars every morning. He had to get back in time to give Kenny back his coat to go to school. Roddy had the job of draining all the water out of Wison’s delivery truck every evening, vehicals did not have anti freeze then, and filling it back up in the morning. Money was impossible. Wilson earned a pittance delivering blocks of ice to household ice boxes for Artic Ice. Every cent they could scrounge up Wilson spent on booze. Then he would treat wife and children in an abusive manner while he was in his cups. Meanwhile the family home was also in jeopardy because of unpaid property taxes.

Finally the situation became intolerable. Margaret sued for and got a legal separation sometime around 1933. (She was Catholic so she couldn't get a divorce. That was the year Wilson transfered the house morgage into her name.) The McBryan children never saw or heard from their father again because the judge refused his request for visiting rights. He vanished from their history. The only thing our father ever told us about him was that he was an alcoholic.

I talked to John McBryan from Leduc, one of the Peace River McBryan's who has always kept a close eye on the Wilson family because his youngest brother Harry was fostered out to them when his mother Violet died two weeks after his birth. Wilson told his family back East and in Northern Alberta very little of what was happening with his family in Edmonton. Apparently this started very early on in the relationship and he was characteristically terse when it ended. This is what I learned in correspondence with Maxine McBryan in Eastern Canada:

“I'll tell you what my father told me about Wilson. Wilson married a Catholic. Dad's family was very Orange. His father, Smitty, wasn't an Orangemen, but Dad's grandparents were very strong Orange. Your (grand)mother was probably a very nice, lovely lady, but marrying a Catholic was taboo. There was a fall out within the family. Not all of the family disowned Wilson, but some unfortunately did. Wilson's father had died in 1910, so he wasn't around to make any judgment. I got the impression from Dad (David Harry McBryan, middle son of Smith, Wilson's nephew),that his father didn't have any bad feelings towards Wilson, my Dad certainly didn't and Hugh's family (Hugh Allingham, Peace River) didn't either. At least, none that I heard of. Why Wilson withdrew from the family, only he can tell, but someone must have said something to him. I can only guess it was because of the marriage to a Catholic.”

Photograph of Wilson courtesy of Maxine McBryan.

The Irish in my extended family appear to have hung on to the religious/political fusing of Orange/Protestant, Green/Catholic for at least a hundred years after all these allegiances had become moot because they were no longer living in and participating in politics in Ireland. It offers a possible explanation as to why Wilson identified himself as a Scot. Elsewhere in our correspondence Maxine and I spoke about this and since none of the other families were doing it, it appears to be Wilson's own idea. The Scots had never fused religion and politics the way the Irish did and Wilson may have realized from his mother Christine, who was Scottish, that this might be a good idea. However, for the girl he married, religion was still a political statement.

“I guess Wilson wanted to marry Margaret but not become Catholic. That led to a separation and finally, his disappearance. Margaret probably harped on him to change religions. He got tired of it and left. Margaret stayed in contact with Hugh McBryan,(John Allan's father) though, and our great Uncle Bill sent her money (William Henry, oldest son of Henry and Christine, Wilson's oldest brother, wealthy Eastern Buisnessman, probably inherited Henry's share of the Insurance business) when she needed it even though she did pay him back. I guess that means that some of his brothers weren't judgmental about who he married. Although Uncle Edward was, but he was a very judgmental person from what I've heard about him. Margaret was also included in Uncle Bill's will. Uncle Hugh,....in his little write up......just mentioned that he (Wilson) abandoned the family, and disappeared when Margaret wanted him to send more money than he was sending.”

A Tale of a Grass Widow

Margaret Kenny y came from a family of ten children in from somewhere in Eastern Canada, one of whom was a priest. She was baptized in Newburg Ontario.The only evidence in her papers or oral history that any of them had any connection with the couple either was a letter from a sister in Montreal who wrote when Ken visited during his Air Force Training in 1940 to tell her that one of her brother’s had died five years previously, so I suspect it's fair to surmise her family also was not too approving of her marrying a Protestant either. In a way, they were a very early version of today's standard nuclear family.

The family pulled together during the crisis. It was not all misery, the kids enjoyed a vibrant social life, there many photographs of people we can not identify anymore, skiing,canoeing and visiting with relatives.Margaret Kenny was a shrewd business woman. They closed in all the large verandas on the house and built more rooms. She packed the kids into the smallest possible number of rooms in the big house and rented out the rest to boarders. By the time the Second World War began to loom on the horizon her children were in or approaching adulthood.

Jetta and Cousin Ralph

Roddy left to work on a military project in Aklavic at 17 years of age in 1936.

Roddy in Aklavic

Helen had run off and married a Protestant, Mervyn Huston, greatly to her mother's displeasure in 1938. Alberta was her hardworking right hand (wo)man.

Ken Working on the railway

My father who had taken up much parental responsibility in Wilson's absence. worked for the NAR railway and then signed up for for the Air Force in 1940. Harry, the fosterling from up north was the baby of the family, ten years younger than her youngest son John, at six or seven years old.

My father brought back a wife from down east after the war and moved out and all the other children grew up and moved on into their own lives.

Granny kept her boarders. After the war when the oil boom opened up with the Leduc strike and rental space was in such demand she sometimes "hot sheeted" beds. She would rent out a room for the daytime for someone who worked nights and for the nightime to another who worked days. She fed them all enormous amounts of food and was cooking all the time.

She kept her boarding house going right into the seventies although eventually she had to go to just renting rooms, the cooking chores got to be too much. Her boarders also provided her with all the social life she wanted or needed. By the time I met her she never left her house or yard except to go to church and even eventually stopped doing that. My father did her weekly shopping every Thursday evening after work as soon as he had acquired a car. Anything else she might need the kid with the bicycle could run up from the corner store for her. I never saw anyone who was not a child, grandchild or a boarder in her house.

Summers at Grandma’s

I was sent down to stay with my grandmother for my fifth to eighth summers. It was pretty apparent from the very first that I was not the little girl she wanted down there to keep her company. I was a tomboy. If there was a puddle to splash in, a tree to climb, a musty shed to crawl into, I was there. Every morning she would dress me up in shiny patent shoes, white socks, pretty dress and tie ribbons on my carefully braided pig tails.
Come afternoon, after her nap I would return from my forays into the neighborhood with my socks dragging about my ankles full of burdock, my dress dusty if not muddy, usually bleeding from dirt encrusted scrapes. And those brightly colored ribbons? Well they must be hanging on a branch somewhere because they were not in my hair anymore. Her daily complaints as she bandaged me up became an expected and familiar part of our relationship.

It was still a lot of fun being there. Every morning she gave me a quarter to go all the way down the block to the store on the corner to buy a loaf of bread and a jug of homo. That cost 23 cents. The other two cents I could have. It took me far longer to pick out my two cents worth of candy than to ask for the bread and milk. Then there was her refrigerator. She made two deserts every night for her boarders and they hardly ever ate all of them. Eat what you want, it will be going to the chickens. And it did. The chickens were fun too. She kept a flock of chickens in her back coop long after the area was zoned residential and bylaws enacted prohibiting the keeping of farm livestock within city limits. She argued with city hall and they let her keep them because her chickens had been there before the bylaw. I liked her chickens better than the ones at home because they were tame and stayed in their coop. She didn't have an attack rooster patrolling the yard the way we did out in Jasper Place. The best part of a visit at Granny Mac's was her stories. She had a million tales about how her and her kids made it through the Depression and the War. I was enthralled, I could listen to her for hours.

Granny Mac worked really hard. Her day began at four am. She started making the lunches her boarders took to work with them and put their breakfast on the table. After that it was chickens and garden. Dress up the little girl and send her down to the store. Then housework, making beds and sweeping and scrubbing in the house. Lunch, and then time for a nap. I could stay inside if I lay down and had a nap on the daybed in front of the window, otherwise I should go outside. My choice. You don't get any guesses at what I preferred. Hence the application of Mercurochrome pretty much every day. After that supper preparations began at three. Granny was a great cook. She ran a high quality boarding house, nothing but guys who worked and no women allowed in the house. She fed them really well.

That year I started going to the "Little Flower School" of St Theresa's Parish down on the flats in the fall. I was almost six. There were no schools open yet near where we lived in Jasper Place so my father enrolled me down there. He worked at Imperial Oil just up on the river bank above. He would drive me in and drop me off when he went to work. I would walk down the steps on 104th street and stay with Granny till it was time to go to school and do the reverse after school on my way back. It was a really neat little school. It had three grade in one room. I went there for one term until a school was built out in JP. My Dad was always mad at how long it took me to get up the steps on 104th street. (Hey, there was neat stuff under those steps that needed investigating!) One day he drove off and left me. I didn't even think about going back down the hill to face my grandmother's anger. I trudged all the way in the dark down Stoney Plain road out to near where Mayfield Common is now, crying all the way.

The next year I came down for the summer was a special treat. My cousin Joey from Hay River was there. Joey was amazing, he knew so much. He was two years older than me. He led me much farther afield than I would have had the nerve to go myself. He took me off to the old victory gardens up above River Road where the IBM Building is now and we stole vegetables and ate carrots out of the ground. He took me uptown and taught me how to shoplift in the department and variety stores up there, he showed me the imported nudist magazines he had got off the boarders with bare naked people in them he had hidden in the old woodshed behind the house. He showed me the house where the witches lived, took me around back to show me that there were long johns hanging on their clothes line, that proved they were witches. I believed every word that came out of his mouth. We only got caught once when a boarder found him trying to teach me how to smoke out behind the cars. It was a very good summer. I guess people call him Buffalo Joe now, but he was more of a Monkey Joe back then, quick, lithe and clever.

Anyways, he was gone next summer, his father wanted him back up north where he could keep an eye on him. Too much monkey business for Granny to handle. Only cousin I ever spent any time with. Last time I saw him he was about ten. His father had flown him down to school. His eyes were shining, that was the best experience he had ever had. He was going to fly airplanes. And he did. (Audio)

The next couple of years were sort of dreary. There were few kids in the neighborhood, mostly old retired people like my grandmother. I couldn't go down to my playground near Renfrew Stadium anymore because some preteen girls had made it their summer headquarters and chased the little kids away. I could go uptown, but I didn't like that as much because I got turned around and lost pretty easy. That left the river bank over across the fifth street bridge. Spent a lot of time over on the river bank. But I was bored and lonely and the altercations with my grandmother had become almost constant. I hated coming back to the house to the now familiar litany of complaints and the dreaded pile of supper dishes to be washed. I began to commit that cardinal of childhood offenses. "Talking back". That damp shroud of depression that I have had to struggle with my entire life was beginning to wrap itself around me. She complained about my attitude to my father and he decided that it was Pat's turn to go down to Grannies. He didn't last too long. He tested the keenness of his new pocket knife on the taut plastic hide of her newly reupholstered dining room chairs and that was it for him. Mike never went down to live, though he did accompany Dad on Saturdays to cultivate Grannies garden. We had moved into the city by now and had kids and activities in our own neighborhoods, a bigger house. Things had changed.

Launching into Adulthood

Granny had ambivalent attitudes to her children's spouses. Helen married Mervyn Huston. All anybody ever told me about him was that he was a band leader. I learned much later that Helen eloped with him because Granny would not give her blessing to a marriage with a Protestant. Helen was banished from her mother's household. Strange behavior on Granny Mac's part, because Wilson had been a Protestant who converted to Catholicism to marry her. Imagine my surprise when I found Mervyn's obituary and found out he had practically built the U of A Pharmacy Program. Sure he played, to pay for university. We never met Helen, Mervyn or their two children. Helen died in 1991 and Mervyn in 2002.

My mother didn't fare much better. As far as Granny was concerned, my other grandmother, Granny Case, Grace Lillian Casey, origially High Church Anglican and loyal Orangewoman, was little better than English. And English were the scum of the earth. Mr. McBryan might be Scottish, but Margaret Kenny was Irish to the core. She felt my mother was not nearly as helpful as a young bride could and should be around her mother-in-law's house. For her part, my mother felt Granny treated her like a servant. Margaret Casey was a spirited lass who did not take well to peremptory commands. Granny had hoped Ken would be the son who entered the priesthood. There were times our mother wished that he had.

Alberta's husband Pete Whitton was OK, but Granny suspected he might not be all that reliable. Alberta and him had five or six kids but we never met any of them. They lived out of town out toward Leduc.

Roddy was Grannies pride and joy. He had left Edmonton as a young man to go off to do something in Acklavic up on the Arctic Circle and had returned as far south as the Alberta boarder to Hay River where he was some kind of big shot. This was before he became Mayor. I think Granny was a bit nonplussed that he had married a woman of blended racial heritage. She gamely told everybody, because Bertha Watts was only one eighth not white that was just as good as being all white. Granny just loved the two of Roddy's kids who stayed with her while they went to school. Mary was so helpful and hardworking. Joey was a handful but that was only because he was so smart. Roddy and Bertha had seven children but other than that summer hanging out with Joey, the only time any of us saw them was once when they had to take a kid into Edmonton for medical care they came over to our house. He wore such beautiful beaded moccasins.

Jetta's husband Frank Forran had Grannies enthusiastic approval. He was a successful business man, (haven't found his obit yet, don't know what kind of business). They later divorced. Jetta came to visit us a couple of times, but we never met Frank or their one daughter Sally. Granny approved of Sally too. She was the perfect little girl, always neatly groomed, poised and totally respectful to her elders. I got real tired of hearing what a paragon Sally was!

With John's wife, the dynamic and charismatic Eva Merrick, (think blonde, think bombshell) even the outspoken and opinionated Margaret Kenny may have realized that discretion is sometimes the better part of valor. She never had anything to say about Eva, good or bad. Around me in any case. Eva and my mother became close lifelong friends. We saw lots of Aunt Eva and Uncle John. They had no kids and liked to travel. John was an aerospace engineer. Worked on the hydraulic brakes of the Avro Arrow among other contracts.

After a couple of years in the new house I could take the bus down to see Granny on my own. Our relationship was much more relaxed now that she did not have any responsibility to straighten out Ken's problem child. I suspect she might have forgotten I was a problem. Alzheimer's was beginning to set in. But her memories of those days of a house full of growing children were still fresh and vibrant, and she could still spin a tale like nobodies business. I was still enthralled. I even got a kick out of her endless grouching about the Jealous's, the mild and harmless English couple who lived next door.

The Mystery of Harry

One name kept coming up in her tales that puzzled me for a long time. Tales of Harry the scamp, Harry the wreaker of household disaster. Harry who had taken a carving knife from the kitchen and climbed up into the attic and viscously stabbed each of the hundred pound sacks of sugar that Granny had prudently stored away before the coming war in expectations of rationing. Harry who had come to a bad end and ended up in jail.

Harry and brother Ralph in 1941

Who the hell was Harry? I knew all her kids names and Harry wasn't one of them. She explained that Harry was a cousin from somewhere. For a long time I thought he was one of the McBryan's living on the coast. It was only recently in talking to John Allan McBryan, lately of Millet, now in Leduc that I found he was John's brother, one of the Peace River McBryan's.

Harry in Korea

Margaret McBryan adopted Harry as a six week old infant when Violet (Clemens) McBryan died shortly after childbirth. Margaret raised him with her own, ten years younger than her youngest John. She had thought he was a little girl who could help her with her housework. Harry had a very hard life, serving in the armed forces, occasionally ending up in jail, escaping once by jumping off a twelve foot high wall. He eventually committed suicide shortly before Christmas 1985. John found out when a letter he had sent to him came back with the word "Deceased" scrawled across the front.

Margaret Kenny's last years were harsh. The last time I saw her I was in my twenties, she couldn't seem to sort me out from my sister. She was very deaf by now and in advanced Alzheimer's. My mother and father wanted to retire to the coast. Dad asked her to consider entering a care facility. She refused to even think of the idea. Dad explained that if he was on the coast there would be no-one to do her grocery shopping for her every Thursday the way he had done for thirty years. She was unconcerned. "My little friend will help me". "My little friend" was my mother who went down to see her every noon hour on her lunch break. Granny didn't know Margaret as Ken's wife and couldn't understand why she would be gone also. Meanwhile, Granny had long since stopped offering board to her lodgers, she didn't have the strength any more. Her boarding house had degenerated to an inner city flophouse. Luckily there wasn't any crack around yet but Mom and Dad still worried about her security. She had one tenant, a young single mother who sometimes helped her out with personal care and housework, but it wasn't enough. Eventually the inevitable happened. She fell in her uninsulated back porch and couldn't get up. No one knows how long she had been lying there before one of her tenants came home and found her. She was rushed to the hospital, but it was too late. She died the next day on April first, 1974. The death certificate noted cause of death as dehydration and starvation.

I'm proud to call this woman my ancestor. Margaret Kenny was never charming, although she could be kind. She was plain spoken and opinionated, full of the prejudices of her time. She had the fortitude to make a hard decision in a hard time. She was willing to fight for her children like a tigress. I am proud of her fighting spirit. This was what divorce was all about in the thirties, forties and fifties. It didn't just break families, it atomized them. It broke the bonds between brothers and sisters and sent all off in separate directions to live among people who need not know that they had been raised by a grass widow. My second son Colin Kenny McBryan is named in memory of her.

Thank God for the sixties.

Theresa McBryan

The children of Wilson and Margaret McBryan

Ken McBryan passed on March 25th 2005

Jetta Forran and John McBryan

Alberta Whitton

Roddy McBryan

Links

Alberta Teachers Association

Alberta Online Encyclopedia

John R. Boyle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Boyle

Edmonton's Story - Chapter 5. War and Depression, 1913-1939

Lambton Block
by Lawrence Herzog
It's Our Heritage | Vol. 20 No. 31 | August 01, 2002

Passion for Life-Mervin Huston

One Man Against the Tide
Hay River’s Red McBryan – former mayor, road builder and community icon – patrols the riverbanks in a face-off against the flood. By Jessa Sinclair

Tomorrow's Wright Brothers - A DC-3 flies the Northern Skies

Tomorrow's Wright Brothers -World’s secondhand fleet still soars

Special Delivery: "The DeHavilland Single Otter," Part Four - September 28, 2007

The McBryan Family in Eastern Canada

2007-10-20T04:48:00.000-07:00

Three Eastern Families

The story of most of the McBryans who grew up in Western Canada began around 1820 when Henry McBrien and his wife, Mary Allingham, daughter of local Irish gentry, Lord Edward Allingham, (possibly a courtesy title because he isn't listed in Burke's Peerage), loaded their half grown family on a boat from Ireland to Quebec City. If you want to check this connection out see Allinghams of Ireland. For the really anal retentive, finding the actual ship might be fun.

(Yes, I know we have been telling everybody we are Scots for four generations but what the hell, times have changed, it's safe to be Irish again. Now we can all wear a “Kiss Me I'm Irish” button.)

Maxine McBryan, a noted Canadian McBryan genealogical reasearcher has this to say on Ross Beattie's website:

“According to the family bible, Henry McBrien was born in Pettigo, a small town in County Fermanaugh, Northern Ireland which is in the parish of Dunkereen. His parents were Thomas McBrien and Elizabeth (nee Bruce). We're not certain how many brothers and sisters Henry had, but we do know that he had at least three brothers and one sister.

Family tradition tells us that his brother, Thomas, went to Australia; we believe that Robert came to Upper Canada with his wife, Jane (nee Johnson) and family, around 1837. According to Henry's great granddaughter, Jessie (McBryan) Menhinick, there was another brother, William, who married Hannah Spense, and they had two sons, Thomas and William. Henry's one sister, Elizabeth, married Ovine Tracy. There may be other siblings who never left Ireland. Except for the Robert McBrien family, we have lost contact with the rest of Henry's brothers and sister.”

Henry and Mary brought with them, fourteen year old Elizabeth, twelve year old Anne, nine year old Edward, six year old Hugh, three year old Isabel and possibly a newborn Mary, or she might have been born shortly after reaching Quebec City or even on the ship. Their youngest, Thomas Allingham was born in Canada, probably at Coburg Ontario. They arrived just at the very beginning of the Great Hunger, but hopefully before the Irish began calling those vessels leaving for the new world "coffin ships".

Again Maxine writes to Beatties website:

Table 1 in Tracking:; Henry McBrien and Mary Allingham; In the Beer's Complementary Biography, printed in 1906, it says that Henry and, his wife, Mary left Ireland and landed at Quebec where they stayed for two year before moving up the St. Lawrence River to Cobourg, Upper Canada. During their stay in Cobourg, they purchased land from the Canada Company in 1830 and moved there in 1831. Henry had purchased the north half of Lot 34, Concession 5 in Whitby Township, Ontario County, while his son Edward bought the south half. Lot 34 was larger than most being two hundred acres, so father and son each had one hundred acres of land to work with.
: They probably lived in a log house when they first settled on the lots, but when Mary's father passed away, they used the money she inherited to build a stone house which is still standing. Although her father's death date is unknown to us yet, we do know that the frame and stone houses began to become more prominent across Ontario in the 1840s and 50s. This hou se may have been built it in the 1830s.; Henry McBrien and Mary Allingham had been married for fifteen years when they emigrated. They were married in 1805 in the Parish of the Lower and Middle Inishmacsaint Church of Ireland in Rosscor, County Fermanaugh, Northern Ireland. That was an Anglican Church, because at that time only the Church of England was legally responsible for registering marriages. One had to be married in the Anglican church to be legally married under English law; it di d not matter whether you were Presbyterian, Methodist, Quaker or Catholic.; There is a record of their daughter, Elizabeth, being christened in 1806. Also in this registry is a record of baptism for Henry's son, Edward's baptism in 1811. The other children, who were born in Ireland, are Ann (1808/9), Hugh (1814), Isabel (1817). We are not sure if Mary (born in 1820) was born in Ireland or Quebec City. Thomas was the youngest born in 1823, and he must have been born in Cobourg if the story of them living in Cobourg for seven years is true. Hugh was the first member of the family to die in t he New World. It was 1836 when he was one month short of his 22nd birthday that he died. He might have been killed in an accident as family tradition tells us. Pioneers who were inexperienced were frequently killed in logging accidents.
: Table 2 in Tracking:; Edward McBrien and Ellen Wilson 1808
: In 1830, Edward and Ellen Wilson were married in Cobourg, Ontario and moved to Whitby. He must have been a very enterprising man because according to his will, he had acquired quite a bit of land which he bequest to his children. There were ten children : Mary (born 1833) who married Philip Cooper; Ann (born 1834) who married John Brander; Sarah (born 1836) who married Samuel Jones; Isabella (born 1840) who married William Bowles; Hugh (born 1840?) who married Margaret Jones; Henry (born 1842) who married Christina Smith; Edward (born 1844) who married Angeline Stevenson; Jane (born 1846) who never married; Thomas (born 1848) who married Adelina Altenbreck and William (born 1849) who never married.; In 1857, Edward invested in some land in the Huron Tract when he purchased Lot 5, Concession 5 of Bosanquet Township from the Canada Company. He transferred the ownership of this land to his daughter, Jane. In 1869, Edward's son, Henry purchased Lot 6, Concession 5 from Luke Robinson which was abutted to Lot 5 . When Henry married and moved down to Bosanquet, he and Christina lived on Lot 6.; Henry married Christina Smith on March 15, 1870 in a little church in Kinsale, Ontario, about two or three miles from the homestead. It was a Methodist church which still stands and his parents and grandparents are buried in the cemetery which surrounds it. In 1883, Henry purchased the north half of Lot 6, Concession 5 from William Hackney. It wasn't until 1898, that Henry bought Lot 5 from his sister, Jane, for $2,500.00.; One mystery that puzzled me on looking at the data from this period was the lack of information about daughter Jane in this family. In Ross Beattie's website the question remains.

Whatever happened to Baby Jane?

A note on Jane Johnston: According to the family story which was written in 1937 for the Robert McBrien family reunion, Robert had died before 1870, because this is what it says, in part:
"In July 1870, Sarah McBrien died and left her family of small folk, but in the meantime Grandfather Robert McBrien had died in Whitby, and Jane McBrien had moved to Bosanquet (to live with her son, Robert and Sarah)."She lent a hand towards the care of the small grandchildren and very soon Robert and Margaret Jane were doing a fine job of mothering their small brothers and sisters. Jane McBrien died at her son Robert's home in the spring of 1874, a spry little old Irish lady who was never ill in bed a day."

Where Jane is buried is a mystery? Common sense seems to indicate that she would be buried in Arkona Cemetery with her daughter-in-law, Sarah, since it would not be convenient to take her all the way back to Whitby to be buried with her husband, Robert. I have an awful suspicion that she was buried in what was known as the Bradley Cemetery which was just north of Forest, Ontario. This cemetery is a bit of a scandal because it was a private cemetery in which the owner sold lots to individuals. In the late 1800s, the Bradley property was sold to the town of Forest and some of the graves were moved by family members, but not all of th graves were moved. That property is now paved over with a parking lot and a big arena. No one has any records of who was buried there because Bradley didn't keep a record of who he sold plots to.
…P.S. … according to this story … [Robert and Jane] almost ended up in Australia … where Robert and Jane were headed when circumstances made them come to Canada.[Maxine McBryan (12 May 2001) wrote that “[Jane] is still a mystery … One day I might go look in Beechwood Cemetery in Forest where she is most likely buried. She might be in the notorious Bradley Cemetery, too, which means she is resting in peace under a parking lot”. And again (10 May 2002) wrote “… someone told me that Jane is buried in Arkona Cemetery … she might be buried with her daughter, Catherine Iles”.]

Table 3 in Tracking:

Henry McBrien and Christina Smith 1843

There is the story of Henry McBrien/McBryan when he first came to Bosanquet. It is said that he drove a small herd of cattle with him, and he used a twig of a weeping willow from his father's farm. When he arrived in Bosanquet, he is supposed to have stuck that twig into the ground, and it grew into a gigantic weeping willow. It's a great story; however, 1870 is also the year in which the Grand Trunk Railway was completed to Sarnia.

It is possible that Christina came by railway, while Henry was driving his small herd across the wilderness. Much of Southern Ontario had been claimed by this time, but most of it had not yet been cleared. There were very poor roads for him to follow, except the one major road, Dundas Street which ran from Toronto to London, Ontario. Even this was not a very good road. When he reached London, he would have probably turned onto the old London Road and than on to Egremont Road which led to Lambton County, turning north at one of the Concessions. There were many creeks and rivers to cross, not to mention the swamps to get by. Lambton County, in particular, was a very swampy territory.

In 1866, Henry McBryan was involved in a very significant event ... the Fenian Raids. He was a private who had been sent to the Niagara Peninsula with the 34th Battalion to head off the raids of the Fenians (Irish Nationalists) which were believed to be heading for that area. He was at the Battle of Ridgeway, the only major battle which took place during this futile attempt to invade Canada. Of course, the Fenians lost. The government of Canada did not see fit to reward their men for their services for quite some time later, when in 1901 the provincial government decided to give them land grants. Henry's piece of land was Lot 1, Concession 3, Lybster Township up in the Thunder Bay District. Before you think this was a noble jester on the part of the provincial government perhaps you should know that this was the exact same time in which the Provincial government was trying to open up the "New Ontario" (that is Northern Ontario), and they were trying to get settlers into this area. Of course, Henry was an old man and did not accept it. In fact, he wrote to the government, asking if they would buy the land back. They did, for fifty dollars.

Henry must have been very civic minded, because there was a school house built on part of his land. According to the Land Registry Office, Henry sold one quarter of an acre to the Trustees, School Session, No. 5 for twenty dollars. The earliest records of this frame building is in 1881 when the trustees were John Brander, Henry's Brother-in-law, Henry McBryan and George Japp. The teacher was Sarah McCordic. In 1888, there was a need for a larger school. An auction for the old school was held; Henry purchased it and had it attached to his house. His nephew, Henry Brander, was the first teacher at the new school. He was paid $325.00 per year and had the responsibilities of janitor in addition to his teaching duties.

In 1894, Henry took over the responsibilities of John Dallas as director for Lambton County in the an insurance company known then as the East Riding of Lambton Farmer's Mutual Fire Insurance Company. This was a cooperative organization which has now grown into a major Lambton County Insurance Company. It began in 1875 when a group of local farmers decided that they needed fire insurance protection. Each policy holder had one vote. Henry held the office of director for Bosanquet until his death in 1910.

By Maxine McBryan submitted to Ross Beattie's website.

One document we found in my father's (Ken McBryan) papers after his death was a tribute to Christine presented ten years after Henry's death.

A Paper Read on the Eighttieth Anniversary of the Birth of Mrs. Henry McBryan of Bosanquet, Ontario

Read by Maxine McBryan

Our story begins in Scott Township away back on September 25th, 1849 when a baby girl was born to Mr. and Mrs. John Smith. The baby was named Christena. Of their other children, four grew to womanhood - Jeanette, who was crippled; Mary, a brilliant young Teacher, who died at the age of nineteen years; Christina, the central figure of our story; and Marion, who now lives at Richmond Hill.

The fact that there were no boys often called the girls to their father's assistance in the fields. On one occasion Mary and Christena took complete charge of the sugar bush in the syrup season. The work was hard but the girls found at the end of the run that they had never felt so well.

About the year 1864 the family moved to Pickering. It was shortly after this, while watching the progress of a cricket game that Christena first saw Henry McBryan. Friendship grew into courtship, the latter ending in marriage in 1870. John Smith provided a generous trousseau for his daughter. Some of the contents were very well preserved and remembered by the older members of the family. Silk dresses, five yards wide, little parasols the size of a young girl's picture hat were prized by the bride. Money was given to buy furniture for the new home.On March the 20th, the young couple came by train to Bosanquet Township, there to live on the grooms fr.rm, Lot 5, Concession 6. The pretty,slight girl with the abundant fair hair, at the age of twenty, came happily to the farm and her stay grew to the length of fifty-two years. Land had already been taken up in the section by others and neighbors were not very far distant. Among them were livingstons, Armitage, Robinsons, Munroe:, Babbingtons, Stephensons, Dallas and Paines. Of these they were most closely associated with the Dallas Family.

The Bride assisted her husband at the outdoor work. Machinery that we take quite ars a matter of course to-dry, was quite unknown at that time. Reapers, however, soon came into use. The first house was small and the walls were whitewashed. This, of course, required constant refinishing. Hardships were many, but these people who came to the fertile acres, which promised much, did not easily turn back. Mr. McBryan drove to Strathroy for his for his first set of harness. Mrs. McBryan attemped and completed a woollen suit for her husband--no machine, just pain taking stitches. It is true that the trousers insisted on going together backwards, but that was only part of the game. Seven children were born to them in their first home. Then fifty acres was purchesed from Mr. Hackney, making a total of one hundred acres. In 1881 they moved to this adjoining farm. Mr. and Mrs. John Laird now occupy this old homestead, the house being the original one. Mrs. Laird is a Granddaughter..............................

For along each side of the lane and about the grounds were planted maple trees. The reward was shade and company. This is how the home got its name "The Maples". The Mother was devoted to flowers. Even with the duties which her children entailed (for they now number ten) she always found time for attention to her numerous flower beds. She found time, also, as did her husband, for reading. The Globe came three times a week to the Jura Post office and was ea.ge"ly devoured. They instilled in their children the value of reading instructive and entertaining matter. The family organ graced the home in due time and with its accompaniment, many and varied were the programmes. The father took no excuses for not entering into the musical spirit-- everybody sang. He, himself, took great pride in his violin. Mrs. McBryan's sweet Scottish voice was a great help to their children in their choral attempts.

Ten children grew to manhood and womanhood. William, a successful business man in Detroit,married Letitia Swann; Jessie, whose name has twice been changed, first to Stevenson and then to Menhennick, lives in Forest. For the past few years, Mrs. McBryan has lived with her daughter Mary, married David Russell, and lives on the 8th Concession of Bosanquet; Edward, married Jennie Gilliard, and lives adjoining the old home; Smith, who distinguished himself with his family of twelve, married Lizzie Campbell; Sara, who is Mrs. Joseph Burnett, reside in Columbus, Kansas; Wilson, married Margaret Kenny, and his home is in Edmonton; Hugh, the youngest, married Violet Clemens, and lives near Kerwood. Two have gone before. Fred, a young and promising prospector in the Peace River District, went happily swimming one day in the year 1915 and was called Home. Ellen, the third child, departed this life in June of this year. Her husband is Thomas McBrien.

Mr. McBryan went some few steps ahead in the year 1910.

And so we come to the evening of her life. We find her on this Eightieth Birthday with her rich full experience, still looking forward with her eyes eager and unafraid. She finds her two great Grandchildren quite as interesting as her thirty-four Grandchildren. Every day finds her eagerly waiting for mail. While in the summer, her flower beds are a great interest, so in winter are her indoor plants.

Visit Maxine here as she recounts a whirlwind trip through the west.

Here we leave the Eastern McBryans behind us. The pioneering of the west was in it's own way as sundering as the original migration from Ireland. Transportation and communication was expensive and sporadic, family ties fell away. For us Westerners, Ontario is the “Old Country”, land of myth and legend. The ones who made the trip were the younger sons who would not be inheriting land in the east. Daughters would go too, like my grandmother Margaret Kenny leaving her ten siblings, but they would be leaving their family name behind.

My Grandmother had her own take on the McBryan saga. According to her, four brothers came from Scotland named McBrien. One of the wives couldn't get along with the other wives so she had her husband change their name to McBryan. So the one who changed his name was Henry, the wife Christine Smith and the other three were Hugh, Edward and Thomas of the family of Edward and Ellen Wilson. Now that is interesting. We will meet more of Henry and Christine's children as the story unfolds. One question left. I wonder who changed the nationality to Scottish? Did Hernry, after his experience fighting the Fenians decide that it was much safer to be Scottish than have anything to do with the whole issue of Irish nationalism and the dicey problem of Protestant versus Roman Christianity?

Theresa McBryan

Other websites of general interest:

History of the Irish Immigration

The Ireland List

The Irish in Canada

Parks Canada-Canadian Workers in History

Upper Canada Genealogy

Canada in the Making

The History Place- The Irish Potato Famine

Remembering Jamie

2007-10-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

Document contributed by Theresa McBryan Edmonton

JAMES MCBRYAN
James (Jamie) 1982 - 2005

James (Jamie) McBryan of Calgary passed away on Wednesday, September 7, 2005 at the age of 22 years. Jamie was born in Calgary on December 14, 1982. He attended Sam Livingston Elementary, Nickel Junior High, and graduated from Lord Beaverbrook High School with the class of 2000. He later earned his diploma in Architectural Technology at SAIT. Jamie loved to travel to new places, participate in outdoor activities and any pursuit that took him off the beaten path and into the wilderness. He was always willing to work hard so that he could later play hard.

Jamie was employed as a Mover and a Bike Courier, allowing him to go on trips to Utah and South America as well as finance his education. A brief experience with an architect's firm convinced him that he was not ready for life in a cubicle. His love of the outdoors led him to place that career on hold in exchange for a season as a Tree Planter.

Physical fitness was very important to Jamie. He was a member of the Capoeira Ache Brazil Academy where he found good friends, good music, a taste of a different culture, and lots of physical challenges. He recently returned from the Batizado in Vancouver where he received the Verde Escuro which he was proud to have earned. Jamie competed in mountain bike racing at Canada Olympic Park, several times placing in the top three. Jamie, his brother, and several friends participated in the "24 Hours of Adrenaline" - an endurance relay race - for two years running. Jamie was quite willing to commute anywhere in Calgary, regardless of the weather conditions and had dreams of a cross-Canada road trip with his brother. Snowboarding, rock climbing, and long boarding were also keen interests of his. During quieter moments, music and art were Jamie's main diversions. He enjoyed playing the drums and the berimbau and appreciated a wide range of music from classical to heavy metal. He loved to draw and could often be found sketching and doodling, sometimes when he was supposed to be working or studying.

Jamie's greatest accomplishment, in a life cut tragically short, was the joy and ache he brought with him and spread to all who knew and loved him. He met life's challenges with a grin and a determination to meet and exceed his own personal best and encouraged others to do the same. He will be sorely missed.

Jamie is survived by his parents, Clyde Gosling and Maureen McBryan; two brothers, Sean and Brent; his sister Sherry; as well as numerous uncles, aunts, cousins, and a host of friends. Jamie was predeceased by his grandparents Margaret and Ken McBryan.

In living memory of James McBryan, a tree will be planted by McINNIS & HOLLOWAY FUNERAL HOMES

Read comments about Jamie by his peers in The Northern California Downhill Long boarding Association.

Final Tribute to Ken McBryan passed on March 25th 2005

2007-09-29T10:40:00.000-07:00

Document written by Michael McBryan Cowichan Bay
Document contributed by Michael McBryan Cowichan Bay

Ken McBryan
1915 - 2005

On Friday they came and took a very small quiet body from its home. Looking at him, I found it hard to believe that a life that was so large to me, could slip away so quietly. The man who we know as Dad was born and raised in Edmonton, raised his own family, then retired to Vancouver Island, on the surface it was a simple unexcited life of a quiet man. Looking deeper, the story of a remarkable man comes to life.

Born in 1915 the eldest son of six children he had the task of helping his mother raising the others. With the coming of the war, he and so many others went to defend his country. As one of the lucky ones, he came back to marry that wonderful girl, Margaret Casey, whom he had met while training in Ottawa.

Being a practical man, and needing a home for his new family Dad built his first home. Out past the end of the streetcar tracks, where the land was inexpensive, and there was room to grow, a family was raised along with a few chickens, a cow and a large garden. The fact that it was beyond the street car line meant a cold morning bicycle ride to get to work, until he became prosperous enough to buy that first car. It was a job that he would keep for more then 30 years with Imperial Oil. With the arrival of Maureen, the youngest of five children, Mom put her foot down. We were going to move back into the city where life would be a little easier for her and no
more chickens to feed.

I remember the move to this grand two-story house with a well manicured yard. Dad did his best, planting flowers, trimming the monster hedge but he was no match to the erosion of five active children bent on climbing every tree, and playing ball through the flowers.

It was a wonderful time; best remembered by the outing that Dad took us on. Every Sunday after church we went on a picnic or adventure of some kind. In the summer it was canoeing on the river or hiking the sand hills. There was always a practical side, berries to be picked, saskatoons along the river, raspberries around abandoned farmsteads, choke cherries in the swamp. In the fall it was the duck hunting trips, the most expensive meat you could get, but glorious fall days spent with dad. In the winter, out to find a place where we could ski. Long before cross county skiing was popular we were slipping our way through the snow, to some hill where Dad taught us how to ski, with a fire to roast hot dogs and get warm before heading for home. We learned of Dad's love of boats, rivers and nature in all its glory.

As we grew and vacations with the family became important, Dad built what was later to become known as the wooden tent in the swamp. Out at Pigeon Lake, Dad found a lot at the end of the road, far from the sandy beaches and just inches above high water; the perfect place for a family cottage. With the help of his ever-patient wife and the five children he built the summer cottage. A place of happy days spent sailing, swimming, and digging in the mud; a care free life for the children while mom worked miracles on a wood burning stove to keep us all fed and dad started yet another garden.

As time marched on, first our maternal grandmother, Granny Case and then Dad's mom (Granny Mac to us children) died. He was freed of the responsibility of taking care of them. Maureen, the youngest was finishing high school, the children where all able to care for them selves. Dad always different, took early retirement. He packed up mom, sold the house out from under the ones that did not want to leave the nest and moved to Vancouver Island, away from the cold Alberta winters.

Once here, he built with the help of his family, his final home. Mom, who wanted a fine home in the city with lots of friends close by, had small cottage on a large lot, far from the amenities of city life. She rose to the occasion; developed new friends and they enjoyed another 30 years together.

Dad, always busy, and a sailboat soon appeared, a garden was planted, fruit trees and grapevines took up residence in the yard. It was a wonderful place for the grand children to come for a summer visit, a great yard to camp in, mysterious woods to hide in. A grandmother who made delicious meals and a grandfather they were a little leery of. Looking back we were never had the newest or the biggest but we had something I will not forget, We had a father, who cared, who took care of his family and his mother. Who raised a family of his own, giving us all the opportunity to learn and grow. A man who was always there. When the family drifted apart some remaining in Edmonton, some to Calgary, some to the interior of BC, it was Dad we called when we wanted to find the latest news on what the others were doing.

Dad's full and interesting life saw the world change from telegrams and steam engine trains to jet planes and the Internet. One constant in his life was his faith. He tried to instill it in his children and he was true to it all his life. I have memories of walking to church with mom and dad, bitters winds in the winter, soft mornings in the summer. Even when we were vacationing at the lake, Sundays mornings everybody had to be up, piled into the car and crowded into the small county church. Near the end, sometimes confused about the day he would want to go to church. Nothing less then a drive by the church would convince him that it was not Sunday.

He was active to the end, a little slower, but still going for the walks, still checking the saskatoon bushes along the side of the road and still watching for the flocks of white swans in the fields.

He will be missed by his family and all those that knew him.

Obituary for Ken and Margaret McBryan

Wedding Announcement for Ken and Margaret McBryan

Birth Certificate Ken McBryan

Obit Margaret McBryan, mother of Ken McBryan

Obit Helen(McBryan) Huston sister of Ken McBryan

Obit Mervyn Huston, brother in law of Ken McBryan

Final Tribute to Margaret McBryan nee Casey Passed on July 17, 2002

2007-09-18T02:50:00.000-07:00

Document created by the McBryan women
Document Contributed by Theresa McBryan Edmonton
Click on the photos to see larger versions.

Margaret McBryan
March 31, 1917-July 17,2002
Some of you may know Margaret as a curler; some may know her as a Guide Leader; others as a quilter and a community volunteer; some as a wife, mother grandmother or friend. What we all know is that she was a wonderful loving person who shared many interests and touched many lives.
Those of you who have always known about Marg’s passion for life in the out of doors may not know that she was raised as a city girl in Ottawa. She was the only daughter of Martin and Grace Casey. She had one brother Alan. Her father had been a dory fisherman in Newfoundland but upon moving to Ottowa worked as a night watchman at Rideau Hall. Her mother Grace had trained as a teacher. Her brother Alan enlisted in the service and saw action in WWII. Margaret like many young women of the time worked in a factory building compasses.

She met her husband, a dashing young western airman, just back from the war at a singles dance in Ottawa. With the venturesome spontaneity that was her trademark, after a whirlwind romance, she married this handsome young stranger on September ninth, 1944. Ken McBryan brought her to Alberta and introduced her to life without running water, electricity or central heating. Their first home that they built together after the birth of their first child, Theresa,was a little shack out on the bald prairie on the outskirts of Jasper Place, just west of Edmonton. There were chickens out back, a cranky jersey cow grazing on the road allowance in front and a huge garden. Water was delivered to barrels by the door from a water truck and heat came after hours of splitting wood. She bore her next three children here, Pat, Michael and Denis.

Outdoor activities were a passion Marg and Ken shared with their children. Every Sunday after church, kids, dog and sometimes Grannie were crammed into a very small car for trips out to Stoney Plain or down into the river valley for berry picking, picnicking, boating or cross country skiing, depending upon the season. All of her children learned to quite confidently start a fire with one match in the pouring rain by the time they were seven or eight. This proved a mixed blessing on occasion during our early adolescence but gave us all a very basic sense of self confidence in being able to master one very necessary survival skill, anywhere, anytime.

As her second oldest approached school age in 1954 she and Ken moved into the West End of Edmonton, and back into the world of central heating and running water. Her last child, Maureen was born here.

When her eldest daughter became a Brownie Marg discovered the second great love of her life, the Girl Guide movement. Before we knew it, in 1959, the house was suddenly full of Girl Guide Cookies, the garage jammed with Girl Guide camping equipment. She had become the St. Andrew’s Girl Guide leader.

Marg was a fabulous Guide Leader. She did not care if her girls accumulated proficiency badges. She and her troop were too busy going on Saturday afternoon hikes or going out every summer on really great camping trips. She took her girls into the mountains regularly and one year even made a train trip to the Winnipeg Pan American Games. She and her girls raised the funds for these trips themselves by bottle drives, cookies sales and church bazaars throughout the year.

She taught responsibility, goal setting and proficiency in a multitude of skills to her girls in a way that was so much fun they didn’t even know that they were learning something. Bears were a special challenge to Mum. In bear country she patrolled the campsite with a pot and ladle at the ready, alert to repel any ursine foolish enough to invade her territory. She came home one summer incandescent with delight at having run a bear out of the cook shelter. Her summers camping with he girls were the highlights of her year, planned for meticulously all year long.

When She and Ken moved to Duncan she continued her engagement with the local Guiding community, serving as a leader, trainer and camp adviser to young women who grew from Guides into Leaders under her care. She was awarded

The YM/YWCA Woman of Distinction Award and given a lifetime membership in the Girl Guides of Canada in 2001 in recognition of her 47 years of service.

Family outing to the summer cottage she and Ken had acquired about the same time were also a special delight for her. She loved to bake bread in a coal and wood stove the way she had in the early days f her marriage. She wasn’t quite as enthusiastic sailor as her children, but she still had her own adventures on the water. One evening she took the little putt putt across the Bay to the Mulhurst guide camp, lingered a little too long at campfire, and got lost on the lake in the dark. She missed our point, continued on down the lake until she ran out of gas then rowed to shore at the farthest end of the lake from our cottage. She hitchhiked back at dawn, to the relief of her worried family.

Marg needed a lot of physical activity and good companionship. She swam, curled and bowled regularly, had a full time job when we all reached adolescence. Christmas was always a huge production requiring weeks and weeks of baking to supply family and friends with huge amounts of baked goods.

Marg’s capacity for caring was not limited to young people. Her mother lived with us for many years until here death. Marg also made a point, as her mother-in-law grew older of making a special trip every lunch hour to Grannie Mac’s near-by home to see if she was O.K. She did this faithfully every day until she and her husband retired to the community of Duncan on Vancouver Island.

There, Marg immediately became involved in the excitement of building another house, sailing the boat she and her husband had bought on retirement, traveling, paddling in the bay, planting fruit trees and rose bushes and of course connecting immediately with the local Girl Guides Community and the local curling club. She had no intellectual concept of lifelong learning; she simply lived it. She loved making anything with fabric or food and tried her hand at any fabric craft that came to her attention. She was a night owl and could often be found working into the wee hours on a challenging piece of cross-stitch, embroidery, patchwork, knitting or sewing.

Every person in her extended family eventually acquired a Siwash sweater or two from wool she had spun herself. Having oversupplied the grandchild market she started knitting for the local hospital auxiliary.

Duncan was a long was a long way away for her children, who by this time had young children of their own; to visit very often. Ken and her made many Christmas trips over the mountains to visit children and grandchildren for Christmas.
Her and Ken also made a number of overseas trips during their retirement.

During the rest of the year she kept up her involvement with young people and saw girls who had been members of her troop grow into adulthood and become close friends and leaders themselves. Her spiritual family is immense, far greater than the five children and fifteen grandchildren and great grandchildren she is related to by blood.

She and Ken celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1994 at the home of their son Michael in Calgary.

Mum has always had a great many friends because she has always been such a good friend. She loved her friends and went out of her way at every opportunity to be a gracious hostess who made everybody feel comfortable in civilization or the wild.

Her fellows Guide Leaders were very special to her. Night Owl Marg was always the first one up at camp, bringing morning coffee to the other leaders. Although alcohol was not a large part of Marg’s regular life

she did squirrel away a little bottle of rum for a midnight tipple with “the girls” when she went to Guider Conventions. She loved ditching the dirt with her Guide friend and at her Stitch and Bitch Quilting circle, but tales never got out of the room. Her confidants knew what they said to her was safe with her.

Mum nourished creativity in everyone and was thrilled by any gift the person had invested personal effort in. Her house is full of every kind of handicraft and handmade item her children, Girl Guides or friends ever made for her.

Her family is sad at Margaret’s passing for our own loss.

We do not grieve for lost chances or unexplored potential. Marg lived a very full life and God took her back quickly and painlessly at a moment of great happiness. She had just returned from her son’s 25th Wedding Anniversary, bubbling with delight after a wonderful weekend with children, spouses and grandchildren in Calgary.

We who were there feel very fortunate that we had this chance to see Mum for the last time, happy, health, full of life humor and joy. We ask everyone here to remember her the same way. Mum never cared about badges for her girls; she never desired honors for herself. Her enduring legacy will be in the memories of joy and happiness everyone here can treasure of
their relationship with our mother.

Obit of Ken and Margaret McBryan

Wedding Announcement Ken and Margaret McBryan

Obituary of Grace Lillian Casey, mother of Margaret Casey

Obituary Alan John Casey brother of Margaret (Casey) McBryan p1
Obit A J Casey p2

Obituary of Olive Casey, sister in law of Margaret Casey